The American’s seven Tour de France wins could vanish with his reputation

That’s it for Lance Armstrong. There can be no more Sinatra-style comebacks on the French backroads. The Texan cyclist has been banned for life by the US anti-doping authorities. And though this is unlikely to impinge on his plans, what will have hurt him is that he the agency also wants to strip him of his titles. If the world cycling body agrees, every one of his seven Tour de France victories will be expunged from the record books. Stalin could not have done as effective a job: the most prolific winner of the competition would no longer be even history.

What an ignominious end for a career which at one time exemplified all that is glorious about sport. Here was a man who had overcome testicular cancer, conquering the world’s toughest endurance event year after year. And now we know how he did it: by the systematic ingestion of performance-enhancing substances.

Or at least that is the ruling of the US anti-drugs body, a conclusion the rider himself is no longer prepared to argue with. As it happens, Armstrong has never failed a drugs test. The samples extracted from his dehydrated body never revealed anything untoward. But suspicions dogged him from the first moment he was fitted with the yellow jersey. Journalists, medical men, almost the entire population of France, were convinced his achievement was less superhuman than super-pharm, the result of a cocktail of stealthily administered assistance.

When several of his former team mates started to break ranks and make allegations of serial doping by the great pedaller, no one seemed particularly surprised. After all, this is professional cycling, a pursuit which, over the years, has been less a sport than a mobile testing laboratory.

Yet there are those who insist the American is the victim of an unholy conspiracy. They point to the lack of definitive proof and suggest that he was undermined by elements who were jealous of his success.

Certainly it is possible to see a similar body of suspicion muttering in the shadows about the latest gale of energy to blow through world cycling: the British. The magnificent Bradley Wiggins reacted with fury when confronted with whispering rumours during his Tour victory this summer. The difference between is that Wiggins has been so unquestionably clean all his career, it is as if his insides are daily flushed with Dettol.

And we need British cycling to be free of Lance-like deception. Not least because were it now to be compromised by chemicals, it would be the very apex of hypocrisy. When he set up Team Sky three years ago, Dave Brailsford, the presiding genius of the sport in this country, set out with the single-minded aim of proving that the Tour could be won without drugs. He has thus far won his argument hands down.

How vital that he continues to do so. Cycling is now cresting a wave of popularity. New young recruits to the glories of the velodrome and open road need to be certain they are not being sucked into a calling damaged by doping.

We need to be sure that drugs are no more, that they departed the sport along with the now unmentionable Armstrong. We need to believe in our new heroes, Sir Chris Hoy, Laura Trott and Jason Kenny. We need to be certain that there is nothing odd about the great Wiggo. Beyond those sideburns, obviously.